We don’t even have confirmation that Thog is dead, do we? Nale is dead, but the Linear Guild (or remnants thereof) could still play a role.
Oops, right, the niece.
Couldn’t Nale be raised? I don’t think anyone is completely out of the game for sure.
What about the Paladins who went north on the shark? O-Chul and the woman Paladin?
Well, he was disintegrated, and Burlew has ruled out True Resurrection. He seems pretty well gone.
In fact, Laurin disintegrated his remains explicitly so he couldn’t be resurrected, just as Malack was forever gone (his ashes blown into the wind)
I think we can say that the Linear Guild is done as far as being a faction in the struggle for the Gates. Nale was the main agent in that program and he seems to be irreversibly dead.
Sabine may seek revenge for Nale’s death but she doesn’t appear to have any interest in carrying out his plans. Whatever involvement she has with the Gates from this point on will be in acting as a agent for the IFCC.
As for the others, none of them are the types who would step into Nale’s shoes as a leader. Those who are still theoretically alive - Hilgya, Pompey, Leeky - were followers. Once they left Nale’s employ, they effectively disappeared from the struggle. And Thog’s the same way in the unlikely event he’s still alive.
Yeah, I don’t think the Linear Guild as the Linear Guild will be a factor, but I can see Thog and/or Sabine getting in the way just for the sake of chaos, if nothing else.
Also to tie up loose ends, since they’re both just sort of out there right now; Sabine explicitly and Thog ambiguously.
Heck, maybe Tarquin digs Thog out and recruits him, and Sabine ends up fighting Thog because she hates Tarquin; just more chaos at the final gate.
You’re right.
I thought Malack couldn’t be resurrected because he was an undead vampiric spirit and you can’t raise/resurrect the undead, not because he was burned to ash. You might have been able to collect the ash and resurrect a living lizardman shaman assuming he hadn’t been dead longer than the applicable caster limits. Of course collecting enough of either Nale or Malack to cast Resurrection upon would be tough out there in the middle of the featureless desert.
This update schedule is kind of a bummer lately. I hate waiting three weeks for a cliffhanger. Hope Burlew’s health is holding up.
Punched through the heart
And you’re to blame, darling
You give thieves a bad name !*
Theoretically, you could resurrect the lizardman he was before he became a vampire. How much that lizardman’s personality would resemble Malack’s is an open question.
But once the breeze came along and mixed in the ashes with thousands of miles of trackless desert, it’s also a moot question.
Questions about the viability of resurrecting Malack aside, Laurin makes clear why she’s doing it.
“Eye for an eye. Malack’s never returning. Neither is his killer.”
Thanks for the link. Now I remember why I thought Nale could be resurrected. We never see what happened to the knife that killed him. The knife with his blood on it. And Haley spent quite a bit of time close to Tarquin, and could easily have lifted it off of him, perhaps as a potential gift to Elan…
A long shot, but not impossible, I think.
Didn’t Tarquin keep the dagger he stuck Nale with, the one that has some of his blood on it? Is that enough for plain ol’ Resurrection? Or am I grasping at straws? (Bugger, sort of ninja’d by puzzlegal.)
Thog could still come back. Sabine probably gets folded into the IFCC as others have pointed out, with a potential payback on Tarquin if he ever gets separated from that Ring of his. I still think Hilgya might show up here, if only for the lulz of Durkula possibly weirding her out with how evil he can be now. I can’t see either Pompey or Leaky coming back.
The only out of Tarq’s gang that can’t potentially show up is Malack, depending on how bad Laurin got messed up by the Snarl. All of the others could conceivably make an appearance, though I think they’ll be dealt with in a section of this book that isn’t set in either the Dwarven or Gnome lands. In that section, they’ll be contending with the Amun -Zora/Haley’s pop/Enor/Ganji group, doing who knows what.
I don’t think we’ll re-visit Gobbotopia, though certainly Xykon can show up whenever he wants to, and we may see a scene where Xykon threatens Redcloak with its destruction. Dunno why I’m thinking about it here, but it looks like Tsukiko is gone for good, but there’s still that Epic-Necromancer soul wandering around post-Splice. And since I’m on the subject of uber-powerful mages, do we think that Aarindarius will show up at some point?
One of the Sapphire Guard that hasn’t been mentioned yet (I think) is Niu. She made it out of the Resistance beatdown, told the Order about Xykon being on the move, and then what happened? Is she doing things with Hinjo? Doesn’t Hinjo need his life saved by Belkar one more time? Lien should be with O-Chul, staking out Kraagor’s Gate, so we’re probably going to see them in this book.
Would Crystal want to come back from the dead, if she knew that Haley/Durkula were the ones who did it? Otherwise, isn’t it just like the Roy as a Bone Golem situation: pretty far decayed, but able to be brought back with a Resurrection once you break down the Construct? What would a revived Crystal do? I mean, the Order rolls with Belkar, who used to be about as evil as it got. Couldn’t the Order use someone with her particular set of skills, and would she agree to do it if they paid her some world-saving amount of cash?
Anyone major that I missed? Could Serini still be alive per 3.5 rules? I forget how long halflings can hang around. Also, if we think she could still be alive, is it at all likely that an Epic-level Rogue has enough sneaking skills that she could have been watching some of the prior events w/o anyone knowing? Do we think Julio’s going to come back at all, or if he does, only in the book after this one? (The final one, IIRC.)
Glad that he’s updated the comic. I was getting a touch worried there.
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0911.html
“we only need a drop of blood for Resurrection”
Don’t forget, Xykon has somehow obtained Serini’s diary. We don’t know the story of how this happened, but I find it doubtful that she survived it.
As for rezzing Nale from the knife, this has been discussed before. Technically it’s against the rules, because it needs a body part removed *after *death, or so I’m told. But Rich has always been ready to bend the rules to suit the story.
It needs to have been a body part at the time of death. So you can’t keep a fingernail clipping in a jar back at your keep just in case you get eaten by a dragon on your next adventure. Whether blood on a knife counts as “at the time of death” probably depends on how quick the person bleeds out and/or how long you leave the knife in.
I think she’s a non-factor. The fiends seemed to feel she was mostly ineffective on her own and rounding her up would be just a minor detail. 641
I really doubt that. Burlew has invested a lot into making the Order the main characters of the story. And he’s written how he’s had to avoid putting them into a situation where they had some powerful ally who could help them but who would effectively take over the story. He’s said that’s the reason he killed off Shojo and destroyed Azure City. By the same token, the Order of the Scribble are all either dead or neutralized and it’s been shown the Gods can’t directly attack the Snarl. Burlew wants to leave the world’s fate in the hands of his characters, not have them stand by while some more powerful character saves it.
A nitpick but I think Niu was just a regular soldier and not a member of the Sapphire Guard. I think Thanh was the only member of the Sapphire Guard in the Resistance.
No one will be able to get a drop of Nale’s blood from Tarquin’s knife. Tarquin continued to use it in later fights. For instance, in strip 934, he attacked Haley with it and then sundered Elan’s rapier with it. After which he dropped it when V, um, gave him a hand.
After the battle, in strip 960 V (probably) cleaned it up, removed its red pleather hilt wrap, and gave it to Belkar. Belkar then tested it out on Durkula. I think it’s safe to say that any of Nale’s blood is long gone. Even if it wasn’t (say V didn’t clean off any blood), Nale’s blood is now mixed with Haley’s blood as well as whatever vampires circulate. That would probably make using it for a Resurrection problematical.
In other words, just forget about Nale coming back.
‘E’s not pinin’! 'E’s passed on! This Nale is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E’s expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed 'im to the perch 'e’d be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E’s off the twig! 'E’s kicked the bucket, 'e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-NALE!!
V is shortly to be one in his/her own right.